The Open-Source Graphics Card Is Dead

[Delgarde]

Sounds like the project could have taken off if:
a) There was only one dominate graphics card company charging arm + leg prices for each minor generation upgrade
b) Poorly implemented and tightly closed driver support that was strictly limited to a major OS.

Since at present we have Amd/Ati, Intel and Nvidia at least giving second class citizen driver support, and competition in hardware performance pricing; I don't see any open source graphics making it past the planning stage, much less actual fab production.

Pretty much. I'm sure there are *some* people who care about whether their graphics hardware is open or not. And I'm sure that *some* of those people care about it enough to try making their own hardware. But that fraction of a fraction really isn't enough to actually achieve much...

[tweak42]

Sounds like the project could have taken off if:
a) There was only one dominate graphics card company charging arm + leg prices for each minor generation upgrade
b) Poorly implemented and tightly closed driver support that was strictly limited to a major OS.

Since at present we have Amd/Ati, Intel and Nvidia at least giving second class citizen driver support, and competition in hardware performance pricing; I don't see any open source graphics making it past the planning stage, much less actual fab production.

[RealNC]

Well, turns out it's not so easy to build a circuit consisting of 3 billion transistors (a GPU from the year 2010) and selling it for 200 bucks. Whatasurprise.

[brouhaha]

Well, this just means, you cannot sell framebuffer VGA for 750$. No one will buy it.

The $750 OGD1 card was not just a framebuffer VGA; the point was to run 3D acceleration in the FPGA. The FPGA was not able to hold as many shaders or run as fast as an ATI or Nvidia chip, but it was a developmental prototype, and if the project was successful, an ASIC would have been developed. It still would have been difficult to match what the big guys can do, but it at least would have wound up somewhere in the ballpark.

The $750 OGD1 card was also not actually intended to sell as a product to end users as a graphics card. It was intended for developers, either of the OGP, or anyone that wanted a fairly beefy FPGA.

When the project started, there was no recent-generation ATI or Nvidia chip that had public documentation. Only an ATI chip that was already about four generations old had docs. ATI (now AMD) started providing documentation that covers most of the the chip (UVD being the notable exception), so the need for OGP is much less that it was when the project started.

[crazycheese]

Well, this just means, you cannot sell framebuffer VGA for 750$. No one will buy it.

Opensource or not, people actually care about functionality/price. Opensource can broaden, enhance and widen the time frame for the functionality, but it will not be replacing the product qualities/price ratio itself. I guess, its a failure at marketing.

[Tgui]

I came here to read about Linux, and free open source software and hardware.
Not about beer.
If I wanted to read about beer, I would goto some beer website.

Larabel is constantly going on and on about his fucking beer and gay ass lederhosen.

And you can still just as easily visit another linux website because no one here gives a shit about your non-linux sensitivities.

[kallisti5]

*cough*url*cough*

Two seconds of DuckDuckGo'ing turned up:

http://wacco.mveas.com

[DanL]

I came here to read about Linux, and free open source software and hardware. Not about beer. If I wanted to read about beer, I would goto some beer website. Larabel is constantly going on and on about his fucking beer and gay ass lederhosen.

The article itself does not mention beer. It just has some pics of beers with captions. Also, Michael is recounting his conversation with E. Eich, which took place over beers, so quit being a whiny troll/bitch.

[uid313]

I know alcoholics that have gone through the twelve steps that are less whiny about mentioning beer.

I came here to read about Linux, and free open source software and hardware.
Not about beer.
If I wanted to read about beer, I would goto some beer website.

Larabel is constantly going on and on about his fucking beer and gay ass lederhosen.

[yogi_berra]

2. Shut up about beer.

I know alcoholics that have gone through the twelve steps that are less whiny about mentioning beer.